


Junior Dissatisfaction

by brawltogethernow



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Other, POV Outsider, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kind of seven-years-later chaser to spuffyduds' preseries fic <em>I Would Rather Be Anywhere Else Than Here Today</em>, featuring its canon but mostly its bartender OC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Junior Dissatisfaction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Would Rather Be Anywhere Else Than Here Today](https://archiveofourown.org/works/49603) by [spuffyduds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds). 



> I didn't notice at the time, but I originally wrote this pretty much exactly seven years after the original publishing date of the piece it's based on. (If you searched around you could correctly deduce from that that this has been sitting in my drafts for a year.)

Seven years later, Geoffrey Tennant walks into the bar and puts a skull down on the counter.

He orders it a drink.

"Er," says Neil, harboring a sneaking suspicion, "that a prop skull?" The big play they're doing this year is Hamlet, after all. Or it was going to be, anyway. From what he's heard, nobody knows what's up or down right now.

"What, this?" Tennant says. "Oh no. This, my friend," he says, grinning, "is the skull of Oliver Welles."

Neil takes a long look at him, looks at his face. "You're a bit cracked, aren't you," he says, and gets the man two drinks. Or maybe he's getting Oliver Welles a drink, he'd come here for enough of them.

 

Tennant gets to talking about Oliver Welles. ("I drink here in his memory, the old bastard.") Neil keeps the drinks coming, for symmetry's sake, and also because Tennant seems better able to hold his liquor than Oliver could.

"Oh, Oliver was always an idiot," he says. "You could tell from the way he always thought of me as something perfect and pristine, which he soiled with his  _dirrr_ ty old man hands." He's holding his own hands in front of him and grimacing at them as if they've done something. "I've always been crazy. I was born crazy. That," he says, emphasizing, "is where the thing that other people call genius comes from." He looks like he's sharing a secret or an inside joke, maybe not with Neil, but with someone else standing in his exact geographical location.

(Seems to Neil Oliver was more likely to whinge about this guy doing the ruining, but then Tennant is really throwing off his full-of-shit-ometer, which is normally pretty reliable.)

 

Tennant actually leaves before closing time, walking straight. A lot of people have been in in the last week to drink over Oliver Welles, and this is pretty atypical. But Neil's pretty sure Tennant's feelings on the subject weren't any less intense. Eventually, Neil's impressions from Oliver's and the rest of the company's infrequent (and right after he left, copious) descriptions of Tennant had gotten stronger than his actual memories of the man from when he had frequented the bar. He'd consciously avoided drawing comparisons aloud a few times tonight. Tennant's descriptions of Oliver, though, had just painted his recollections of the man more vivid in his mind. It's depressing, even if Neil hadn't always liked him.

When Tennant walks out of the bar he says something that sounds like a disparaging comment aimed at the skull.

Neil made sure to go see him perform in something after Oliver's week drunkenly extolling his brilliance. He was absolutely right, about that.


End file.
